Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Manhattan Falling

With all the Manhattan talk around here lately, I thought this piece was relevant. Hot off the presses at CNN Money:

Manhattan real estate hits wall

Manhattan real estate may have hit a wall -- albeit a very high one. The last half of 2005 saw home prices lag, according to two new reports from Manhattan brokers.

According to Prudential Douglas Elliman, the median sale price for co-ops and condos in Manhattan rose just 1.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2005, to $760,000. The Corcoran Group found that median sales price declined during the quarter, with a 4 percent slide.

...

The Manhattan slowdown comes on the heels of similar drops in the third quarter in some of the nation's most expensive real estate markets. Boston and other Bay State areas, many California markets, the Washington D.C. area, and suburban New York counties, all recorded lower or flattening prices, according to National City, a financial holding company.

According to Pamela Liebman, Corcoran's CEO, the Manhattan market began to soften in the third quarter, owing in part to rising energy costs and media reports of the real estate bubble. (Love it, these guys are blaming the media for the bubble bursting)

Locally, a lot of new inventory came on the market. Some 5,764 residences were in the listing inventory, a huge 52 percent increase over the past year.

...

"We can't extrapolate national trends from Manhattan markets," says Richard DeKaser, chief economist for National City Corp. But the turn in Gotham prices does mirror what has happened in many other pricey regions.

It's evidence of what DeKaser calls "the turning of the housing market."

The average Boston sale price declined 2 percent in the third quarter of 2005, according to data from National City's Housing Valuation Analysis. San Francisco real estate fell about 1.2 percent and San Diego 1.5 percent. Washington D.C. rose, but only by about 1.3 percent and Los Angeles went up 1.2 percent during the quarter. Prices in northern New Jersey and in Nassau/Suffolk Counties in New York also fell.

DeKaser expects price increases nationwide to continue to slow. "Demand and market price appreciation peaked sometime this summer. What we're seeing now is an orderly retreat," he says.

Caveat Emptor,
Grim

8 Comments:

Blogger grim said...

I'll take Manhattan? Not
so fast, buyers say


It's not quite a buyer's market, but Manhattan is close.

Sales of Manhattan apartments dropped and for-sale units piled up in the fourth quarter of 2005, reflecting a cooling of the once-scorching market, even as per-square-foot prices hit a record, according to an influential residential real estate report released on Wednesday.


...

The numbers more or less echo a slate of other real estate reports released this week.

"It's not a buyer's market, but we're close to equilibrium," said Jonathan Miller, president of real estate appraisal and consultant firm Miller Samuel Inc., and the report's author.

Buyers in the fourth quarter took longer to commit to a purchase, while the number of apartments for sale soared.


grim

1/04/2006 10:17:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A great deal of folks are telling me that in the spring the bankers are in force buying homes in the Summit NJ area armed with their bonus money. Now, since they are investment types if this big rebound in the spring does not happen then the Grim man is right on the money.

I am betting on the Grim man.

1/04/2006 05:55:00 PM  
Blogger grim said...

I'm not so sure I believe investment bankers making six figure bonuses are our next set of greater fools. While I'm sure the money is burning a hole in some pockets, these people aren't making big bonuses because they are naive investors.

grim

1/04/2006 07:46:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

don't give these investment bankers so much credit. they are overpaid salesman. That's it.
Who do you think talks ceo's into doing mergers that usually fail.

1/04/2006 09:04:00 PM  
Blogger grim said...

For those interested, inventory updates will begin again next week. Had some technical issues that prevented me from getting the data over the past few weeks but we're back on track again.

grim

1/05/2006 08:58:00 AM  
Blogger grim said...

A significant number of visitors to this site come from major financial institutions. A quick look at the log on any given day provides me with a list that reads like the Fortune 500. And it isn't just a slow drip of traffic from these (and many other incredibly notable institutions), this traffic makes up approximately 20% of this sites daily traffic.

The housing bubble is on the radar at many financial and government institutions. Look at the analyst reports coming out of some of the major investment banks. Many are incredibly bearish on the housing market, and that's the opinion that's public. I can just imagine what is being discussed in private.

This is myth and folklore. Just like there will be a wave of rich immigrants from Asia that are going to sweep in and buy California. The Northeast has a wave of big bonus holding investment bankers that are going to sweep in and keep our market propped up.

There are currently over 20,000 homes for sale on the GSMLS in Northern NJ. Combine that with the NJMLS, Hudson MLS, and FSBO numbers. Now combine that number with Long Island, NY State, and NYC. Just how many dumb big bonus holding investment bankers are there?

Caveat Emptor,
Grim

1/05/2006 09:50:00 AM  
Blogger chicagofinance said...

Investment bankers hoard and obscure information, and focus on volume of "transactions". They couldn't care less about buying or selling, they just want to advise on both ends of the activity, and extract as high a fee as possible, while immunizing themselves from risk.

They only run into trouble when their pure arrogance blinds them into visceral decisions in their personal lives. They are so used to have an overwhelming advantage by "playing with a stacked deck" in business, that they sometimes are lost in their own personal dealings.

1/05/2006 11:28:00 AM  
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4/19/2006 12:04:00 AM  

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